fowls, and even the whipt cream of the dessert, which I always prize as much, or more, than the more substantial part of the feast. Pray then go on, for I have abandoned "et certamina divitiarum, et Moschi causam," to read and answer your letter, which I am doing in the Court of Chancery, until a cause is called on. But I am summoned, and must leave you. the compliment. Pray appreciate Yours, C. S. LETTER V. Fitzwalter to Strickland. ARISTOCRATS;-WHIG AND TORY, MALE AND FEMALE. I AM glad you liked the sketch I gave you of my humoursome landlord. Though irritable, I think his little outward bursts of feeling carry off the irritation, and his indignation soon evaporates with his passion, particularly when his vengance is satisfied. His spleen, however, is always caustic and amusing. I have just now been exceedingly entertained, with his account of a cure he says he has experienced, of his anger against a very great Whig lady, once handsome, and though a Whig, an exclusive of the first water. This person, from the airs she gave herself, and her marked determination to admit no one, even of the neighbourhood, unless of the first fashion (which she did not scruple to say he was not) into her intimacy, kept his resentment alive for near twenty years. To my surprise I found that, a few days before my arrival, he had paid a triennial visit to her father, one of those aristocratic Whigs we talked of, whose professed principles in favour of the people, and repulsive conduct in keeping them at a distance, moves Oldacre's bile in no ordinary degree. My business, however, is with the lady, for whom his mingled anger and contempt had long been known. "Were you not afraid," said I, "to enter her very den ?" "My fears," he replied, "have long been over, and I now go really to satisfy curiosity, added perhaps to a little gratification of spleen, to observe the metamorphoses of time, in this once pretty, but arrogant and foolish person." 66 Why her character, surely," said I, “cannot be changed ?" "No! but her person is; and you make me wonder at your simplicity, when you do not seem to know the secret that changes, and ever must change, the manners of any woman, let her pride or fierceness be what it will." "What is that secret ?" asked I. "Why the mere fact of growing old, and the consequent loss of beauty, to be sure." Lady Wilhelmina, from sixteen to twenty (aye, I believe to six-and-twenty, for she was even then tolerably fraiche,) might have given and did give herself what airs she pleased. She kept me, I know, and others far beyond me, at a most supercilious distance; and we never forgave it. But after six-andtwenty, unless married, (and if highly married, then the devil breaks loose) she begins a little to falter; at thirty, she grows almost civil, and at forty, absolutely polite. We are revenged, therefore—gloriously revenged. She is now almost an old woman, and quite an old maid. When she was but twoand-twenty, she used to cut me for that sprig of a viscount, at whom she evidently threw herself. But, O! charming! he would not be caught; and that delighted me. As for the present, she is now shorn of her beams; her exclusiveness is only laughed at, and she is harmless as a dove." I laughed, particularly when he added, Audivére, Lyce, Dî, mea vota; Dî O, there is nothing like celibacy (against your will), and dimples turning to wrinkles, to tame a woman, whether an exclusive or a coquet! "And have you really found this difference," Horace, Odes, 4, 13, thus given by Francis : "The Gods, the Gods have heard my prayer! See, Lyce, see that hoary hair, asked I," or is it only indignation and resentment still preying upon you ?" "Found it! Why, Lord bless me, the woman is forty years old-hence she is now absolutely complaisant at my visits! Nay, she sues almost for any one, even old, and without a title, like myself, to take a seat on the same couch by her. O! I have indeed been revenged-she is delightfully unhappy!" "But how do you really know that ?" asked I. "Why, she begins, (for she has no real spirit) to talk like Mrs. Western, in 'Tom Jones,' of her Parthenissa days, and can with difficulty get people to listen to that. Poor thing! if it were not for the handle to her name, as sailors say, she would hide herself: for in public she is avoided by the young, and cannot yet herd with the old. However, there is some chance for her; for they say has turned blue,—a saint, or a radical,—I don't know which, but it makes no difference. Either will do, so as she can forget her former self." she I was much amused at this rattle, though I could not help telling him it indicated much of bygone mortifications. "Well," said he, "I wish her no other harm than that she should discover that, after forty, no woman can have the smallest influence over a man -at least for herself. She may, if she have daugh |